make: Nothing to be done for `all'

Question

I am going through an eg pgm to create a make file.

http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/

My folder eg_make_creation contains the following files,

desktop:~/eg_make_creation$ ls
factorial.c  functions.h  hello  hello.c  main.c  Makefile

Makefile

# I am a comment, and I want to say that the variable CC will be
# the compiler to use.
CC=gcc
# Hwy!, I am comment no.2. I want to say that CFLAGS will be the
#options I'll pass to the compiler
CFLAGS=-c -Wall

all:hello

hello:main.o factorial.o hello.o
  $(CC) main.o factorial.o hello.o -o hello

main.o:main.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) main.c

factorial.o:factorial.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) factorial.c

hello.o:hello.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) hello.c

clean:
  rm -rf *o hello

error:

desktop:~/eg_make_creation$ make all
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.

Please help me understand to compile this program.

Answer 1

Sometimes "Nothing to be done for all" error can be caused by spaces before command in makefile rule instead of tab. Please ensure that you use tabs instead of spaces inside of your rules.

all:
<\t>$(CC) $(CFLAGS) ...

instead of

all:
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) ...

Please see the GNU make manual for the rule syntax description: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Rule-Syntax